As a professional front-end developer of almost 10 years, it's odd I've never had my own personal website. I'm usually too lost in a project and would rather be exploring something new. However, the increase in popularity of server-side rendering has given me a great excuse to finally have a reason to tackle my own site.

Next.js and React 18 make for an interesting deviation from my usual client-side forte. The technical differences are fairly apparent, but I think the headspace of thinking in terms of keeping things server-side is more nuanced and hard to get used to. This is especially true when all your usual React comforts are there within easy reach with nothing stopping you. When you hit a problem or a suggestion from Next's surprisingly helpful builder, it's easy to take the quick fix and implement the client-side solution. I think so far I've managed to avoid temptation, and this site should be completely static... famous last words.